Tuesday 31 December 2013 02.00 EST
First published on Tuesday 31 December 2013 02.00 EST

This year marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, which revolutionised the study of history. Until then, history had been predominantly about the powerful – the ruling order of kings and queens, aristocrats, industrialists, soldiers, politicians and landowners – and the interpretation of the world through their culture and belief systems.

With Thompson's book, this was turned upside down – "history from below" was a new way of seeing the world through the eyes of the emergent working class of the early 19th century and the movements and ideas that it and its allies created. He sought "to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the 'obsolete' hand-loom weaver, the 'utopian' artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity".

This approach to history is now under attack from the ideologues of the new right and from coalition education ministers. But why does this matter: isn't it just a somewhat arcane intellectual debate? There are at least three reasons why this issue has direct relevance.

First, the current dominance of neoliberal, elitist ideology threatens to create a culturally totalitarian Orwellian society with no space for alternative conceptions. The gap between the rich and powerful and the rest is accompanied by a similar gulf in political perceptions – as indicated, for instance, by Russell Brand's recent intervention. The result is that the political process becomes more and more discredited. This closing down of the discussion of alternative analyses is exemplified by the revolt of economics students against being taught exclusively the (manifestly untenable) neoclassical orthodoxies, and their demands that alternative theories – those of Marx, Adam Smith and Keynes – should be included in their curriculums.

Second, Thompson showed how fundamental social and political change came from movements of the "common people". He had little time for political parties and their bureaucratised processes, still less for the belief that history was predetermined: he believed in the human agency of ordinary people making their own history. As he put it, "The working class did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present at its own making." In this sense, his position prefigures the non-aligned progressive left of the early 21st century – exemplified by the Greens, the Occupy movement, UK Uncut, and the opposition to the renewal of Trident. (The last echoes Thompson's own political activism: throughout his adult life he was a prominent peace campaigner, most notably in the cold war climate of the 1980s in the European Nuclear Disarmament movement.)

Third, it is no coincidence that the current attacks on the welfare state and the public sector are accompanied by attempts to undermine core cultural and institutional freedoms – the jury system, the rights of trade unionists and minorities, and media freedom. Thompson not only campaigned passionately for the protection of these freedoms as a core element of a democratic society, he also demonstrated through his historical work how almost all these freedoms had been achieved through working-class, progressive struggle against the bitter opposition of the ruling class.

The consequences of forgetting these lessons would be profound. If the next generation of schoolchildren and university students are, in effect, indoctrinated into believing that there is no alternative to a politics that privileges the rich and powerful then political disillusionment and alienation will increase. A vacuum in democratic politics is likely to lead to the rise of the populist, xenophobic right, as can be seen in the current politics of both the UK and other European societies. The stakes could hardly be higher.